Will language continue to evolve?

[Battlehymn Republic]

I'd say of course, lingo and slang and informal terms will continue to be born and to replace old ones.

But will language as we speak it right now remain pretty much the same in, say, 100 years from now?

I'd say yes. With all of the technology we have to preserve grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and so on, it's unlikely that language will drastically morph.

[LadyTevar]

Go to Rome. Look at all the Latin carved in stone.

Then listen to the Italians talk.

Even in Roman times, language changed and adapted. This won't change.

[Noble Ire]

Go to Rome. Look at all the Latin carved in stone.

Then listen to the Italians talk.

Even in Roman times, language changed and adapted. This won't change.

Eh, the Romans were freaks.


I swear, Latin "dictionaries" are worthless when you actually try to translate ancient text. Nouns with dozens of completely dispirate meanings, words with more suffixes than root letters, authors who actually made up words (and worse, substitutes for common, simple words) just because they sounded better when recited in verse...

But as to the OP, of course language will continue to change and evolve. Technology won't halt the inevitable morphing of terminology and usage, and indeed it may accelerate it, with people seeking simpler, more "IM" friendly speech patterns, and phrases from other languages increasingly adapted into the public vernacular.

[RedImperator]

I'd say of course, lingo and slang and informal terms will continue to be born and to replace old ones.

But will language as we speak it right now remain pretty much the same in, say, 100 years from now?

I'd say yes. With all of the technology we have to preserve grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and so on, it's unlikely that language will drastically morph.

Nonsense. How would technology halt linguistic evolution now, when technology failed to halt it in the past? The overwhelming majority of the records--and I use that term broadly, in the sense of any communication that is intended to last longer than it takes to say it--produced today are written, just like they have been since the invention of writing itself, and written records have failed to halt linguistic evolution. It doesn't make a lick of difference if it's electronic or on paper.

[Admiral Johnason]

Couldn't tech actually accelerate the shift in language?

[Jalinth]

Language will continue to evolve, but the rate of change is an issue.

English is a very rapidly changing language - it borrows, steals, invents, to the point that Shakespeare is marginally understandable. Chaucer is virtually incomprehensible.

A friend who is Polish told me very old Polish works are still comprehensive and that Russian is still understandable (Russian and Polish apparently "broke away" more than a millenia ago) if you use very simple phrases.

So it depends on what the conditions are. If the English speaking world stablilizes/stagnants, then I'd expect English in 3,006 would be at least comprehensible to me from 2,006. But if it remains the "world" language, then I'd expect change to be rapid and modern spoken English would be incomprehensible while modern written English marginally so (equivalent to Chaucerian).

Language isn't going to stop changing - only question is "how fast".

[RedImperator]

Let's not forget that spoken language can change while written language remains static. It's plenty possible that English could splinter into mutually unintelligible dialects that share a written language--Chinese did just that.

[Lusankya]

Technology would possibly decrease the divergence of languages. With people from all over the world communicating with each other, local dialects may be less pronounced, but language change will still occur.

You can even see grammatical change occuring now. Back in the day, you couldn't use a preposition at the end of a sentence, but now look at where our language is at.


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[SWPIGWANG]

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[Miles Teg]

A big reason that English has changes more than some other languages (Russian and Polish) is because "English" was never formally developed until around the turn of the millenia. At about that time, a bunch of scholars got together and said "Hey, we want our language to be proper, so lets fuck it up by making a bunch of grammar rules based on Latin! Hence, the silly rules like no split infinities (you literally can't split an infinitive in a Latin based language). Before all this, there were hundres of disparate dialects of English spoken, often times from village to village.

Miles Teg

[Miles Teg]

A big reason that English has changed more than some other languages (Russian and Polish) is because "English" was never formally developed until around the turn of the millenia. At about that time, a bunch of scholars got together and said "Hey, we want our language to be proper, so lets fuck it up by making a bunch of grammar rules based on Latin! Hence, the silly rules like no split infinities (you literally can't split an infinitive in a Latin based language). Before all this, there were hundres of disparate dialects of English spoken, often times from village to village.

Miles Teg

[Broomstick]

I'd say yes. With all of the technology we have to preserve grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and so on, it's unlikely that language will drastically morph.

I don't know about other regions, but there has been a noticable, hearable change in American since the 1890-1900 years. We don't have a lot of recordings from that era compared to now, but what do have sounds subtly different. It may exist in, say, British recordings as well but if it does the shift there is not something my ear can pick up but maybe someone over there could.

Even if modern communications technology tends to moderate local dialects and slow down the pace of changes in pronounciation, new words and new usages will continue to arise and spread. Some of this, well, I'm not sure what the formal term for it would be, folks keep churning out the jargon - 50 years ago business people talked, they didn't "dialogue". Will one word replace the other? Will the two acquire subtly different meanings, perhaps "talk" remaining informal and "dialogue" becoming the word for business-related communication?

Part of this is driven by technology - "spam" used to refer solely to an infamous form of "meat" in a can, bugs were solely crawling things you smashed with a rolled up newspaper, and crack was a structural defect, not something you snorted up your nose.

Despite the modern communication technologies, I think English still retains a strong ability to split into separately evolving dialects. The divide between English and American is well known. Other emerging English dialects are Australian and Indian. Whether those will retain some mutal intelligebility or not, and for how long, is not a question I can answer.

[RedImperator]

Despite the modern communication technologies, I think English still retains a strong ability to split into separately evolving dialects. The divide between English and American is well known. Other emerging English dialects are Australian and Indian. Whether those will retain some mutal intelligebility or not, and for how long, is not a question I can answer.

I read somewhere that English seems to be cleaving along a line that runs roughly southeast from Hudson's Bay to Chesepeake Bay. Everything east of that line, including Britian itself, is going one way, while the American South, midwest, California, and Australia/New Zealand are going another. I don't recall the details now, but it was something about how vowels are pronounced that's indicating the split.

[Sofia]

Even if the words and grammar themselves stay static (not bloody likely) the meanings will change. I'm reading Pride and Prejudice at the moment, and the other day I came across the word "condescending," but in context it was closer to the meaning of the word "gracious" than what the word means today. The book wasn't even written that long ago, relatively.

Nouns with dozens of completely dispirate meanings, words with more suffixes than root letters, authors who actually made up words (and worse, substitutes for common, simple words) just because they sounded better when recited in verse...

And this is more messy/complicated than English, how?

[General Zod]

Let's not forget that spoken language can change while written language remains static. It's plenty possible that English could splinter into mutually unintelligible dialects that share a written language--Chinese did just that.

It already has. I'll direct you toward ebonics.

[Surlethe]

I seem to recall a linguistics article posted a while back which described that, despite the increase in technology, regional dialects are actually becoming more common in the US, not less. I think what may happen is that English grammar will change, but much more slowly than spoken English, because text communication is becoming much more widespread than even two centuries ago. Spoken English, on the other hand, has fewer restrictions, and shouldn't really have too much interference from technology in "speciating". For example, if I talked to someone in Ireland, I might have to stop and ask him to repeat what he said before I understood him; however, I can understand his written language perfectly well.

Actually, this is reminiscent of Chinese; the spoken language splintered into regional dialects, but (barring the change between traditional and simplified) the written language has remained fairly constant for centuries, IIRC. Given the proliferation and importance of textual communication, I'd think that would also be the case in English, as well.

EDIT:

I'd say yes. With all of the technology we have to preserve grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and so on, it's unlikely that language will drastically morph.

I think you're right; language won't drastically morph over a short period of time. The (written, at least) English language hasn't "speciated" since before Shakespeare -- there have been substantial changes, but Romeo and Juliet is not, by any stretch of the imagination, incomprehensible to a modern reader. However, that doesn't mean language will stop evolving, any more than the fact that turtles a thousand years can interbreed with turtles now means that turtles will stop evolving.

[Infidel7]

What about the modern saturation of recorded language? I would think that such exposure to television and radio from the past would have a very strong influence on the future evolution of language.

[RedImperator]

What about the modern saturation of recorded language? I would think that such exposure to television and radio from the past would have a very strong influence on the future evolution of language.

People predicted television and radio would wipe out regional accents; it never happened. And the trend now is away from centralized production and distribution of recorded material, exposing future generations to any number of local variants of English.

It already has. I'll direct you toward ebonics.

African American Vernacular is something of an unusual case because it came into being and is sustained entirely by racial and economic segregation, not physical distance (in Philadelphia, the parts of the city where the local variant of standard English is dominant are separated from the parts where AAV is dominant literally by a single street in places). If the ghettoes dissolved, AAV would fade away in the north.

[Ariphaos]

I'd say of course, lingo and slang and informal terms will continue to be born and to replace old ones.

But will language as we speak it right now remain pretty much the same in, say, 100 years from now?

I'd say yes. With all of the technology we have to preserve grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and so on, it's unlikely that language will drastically morph.

Drastically, no, a hundred years is far too short a time given our ever-increasing lifespans and the retardation of change mass education provides. Over long periods, however, even English changes significantly, though you have to go back to Old English, before the Norman Invasion some nine and a half centuries ago, to get a language so far removed from English it would have to be studied as a separate language rather than merely a large set of modifications.

Some modern, currently occuring changes in the English language, as a set of examples:

Various 'h' sounds being omitted, such as human -> yooman.

Initial double-consonants replaced by glottal stops (full stop of vocalization). batman -> ba-man.

Sometimes vowels get inserted into double consonants instead. Nuclear versus nukular is probably the most well known, at this point.

This is continuous, but English has a voracious apetite for new vocabulary. My linguistics professor mentioned a friend telling her that she got 'wanded' at the airport. As in, passed over with a sensor wand. This is usually highly specific vocabulary, however, and only an element of what you are asking about. Sometimes words are made up for entirely nonsensical purposes. See 'meep' or 'd'oh'.

Going into slang, various words get shortened and sometimes get accepted into standard vocabulary. 'hood' for neighborhood is one. 'Internet slang' is also fully viable, though I detest most of it, 'r', 'u', 'y', etc. Then again, so is the mass browbeating of such language - it is a social construct, after all. Some is probably here to stay - lol, cya, etc, and is leaking back into the 'standard' vocabulary.

[Count Dooku]

Let's not forget that spoken language can change while written language remains static. It's plenty possible that English could splinter into mutually unintelligible dialects that share a written language--Chinese did just that.

It already has. I'll direct you toward ebonics.

My dad is a teacher, and from what he says, kids don't even write in English - they write in ebonics. Spelling, to them, consists of writing things exactly as they say them. I was a TA for him my senior year, and graded a lot of paper/homework for him. He is a science teacher, and all too often, I read 'erf', instead of Earth; peeps instead of people; young instead of new. Starting to get the idea? For many young Americans (I say that, and I'm only 19), language, both written and spoken, is evolving. I don't know whether that's for the better or for the worse, but it is evolving. Their lack of spelling ability is completely acceptable in highschool (at least my old highschool), but I've seen many college professors tear up papers due to the horrid amount of spelling mistakes.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Yeah, my initial assertion was that barring any mass technological/social changes (mass breakdown of normal life as we know it due to an apocalyptic event, basically), the major languages will still in intelligible after a century or two. Not that language won't change at all.

However, the idea about more dialects appearing is very interesting. I had heard that certain forms of a language are being used more due to mass communications- "Californian" English growing, while Southern dialects disappearing. Anyone heard of that as well?

[Jalinth]

People predicted television and radio would wipe out regional accents; it never happened. And the trend now is away from centralized production and distribution of recorded material, exposing future generations to any number of local variants of English.

Canada is a pretty good example of this. People were predicting that Canadians would start sounding identical to Americans because of the massive media exposure we have to the US. Instead, while we have switched a few words to the US, we don't sound like Americans.

You need to be a local or have a very trained ear (I've met a few people from the UK who can tell the difference, but they could also tell the difference between a whole wide range of English accents) to hear the difference between American mid-West and Canadian accents. It isn't that large and has never been that large even back in my mother's day (pre-WWII). This isn't a New Zealand/Australian size gap. But we definitely don't sound like New Yorkers, Bostonians, or those from Northern New York (very nasal from what I remember).

[Lusankya]

The media saturation allows non-Americans to understand Americans better than Americans understand non-Americans, so perhaps even if, as Surlethe said, regional accents are actually increasing, it will be easier for people to understand or speak the 'standard' English. Even though I don't speak the way Amercans do, it takes a real brain fart for me not to understand what they're saying (like the time Anarchist Bunny was talking about thongs, and it took me a while to figure out that he wasn't talking about footwear. I know what thong means in America, but I quite simply wasn't thinking.)


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[Kathryn]

Isn't it true that 'dawg' is in the dictionary now?

...

My personal hypothesis is that cyberworld dialect is going to take over the entire Universe Muahahah! :given enough time for evolutionary change of course:

[Winston Blake]

The media saturation allows non-Americans to understand Americans better than Americans understand non-Americans, so perhaps even if, as Surlethe said, regional accents are actually increasing, it will be easier for people to understand or speak the 'standard' English. Even though I don't speak the way Amercans do, it takes a real brain fart for me not to understand what they're saying (like the time Anarchist Bunny was talking about thongs, and it took me a while to figure out that he wasn't talking about footwear. I know what thong means in America, but I quite simply wasn't thinking.)

I've always thought it odd that since easily half of all Australian TV is from America, everybody (that I know) can speak with an American accent if they want to. Hell, it's used almost unconsciously whenever there's a need to emphasise that a phrase is being recounted/acted/quoted.